


And It All Began With You

by tiger_moran



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Downey films), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Bisexual Character, Devotion, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Implied/Referenced Death, Implied/Referenced Murder, Implied/Referenced Sex, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25802056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiger_moran/pseuds/tiger_moran
Summary: His past life was a very different one, one a world away where he always lived in the shadow of others, never able to truly compare to them. Even his decision to join the army was less about his own desires and more to do with simply trying to follow in the footsteps of the Morans who came before him, in the absence of anything better to do. Yet that career ended abruptly and in disgrace and left him flung back to a country and a city where he was born but which he had never regarded as home. There he waited, essentially, for death.
Relationships: Sebastian Moran/James Moriarty, Sebastian Moran/Kitty Winter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	And It All Began With You

**Author's Note:**

> And it all began with you  
> And it ends for me the day you leave  
> And it all began with you  
> So today we stop the world  
> When you whisper my name I'll be with you  
> When you reach out your hand I'll be with you  
> When you walk to the light I'll be with you  
> When you stand before God I'll be with you  
> \- Gary Numan - And It All Began With You

His past life was a very different one, one a world away where he always lived in the shadow of others, never able to truly compare to them. Even his decision to join the army was less about his own desires and more to do with simply trying to follow in the footsteps of the Morans who came before him, in the absence of anything better to do. Yet that career ended abruptly and in disgrace and left him flung back to a country and a city where he was born but which he had never regarded as home. There he waited, essentially, for death. Oh he did not seek it out so openly as those who tossed themselves into the icy waters of the Thames come winter, or who hanged themselves or put a bullet through their brains. But he drank and he fucked and he fought, flirting with death, courting it.

Once, drunk, he had an epiphany, of sorts.

“I've always been dead, Kit,” he told Kitty, his lover, more or less, then. His blue eyes seemed to gleam with a strange inner light, although it was probably just intoxication. “That's why I could never fuckin' die, not even with the bullets flyin' all around me.”

“Don't be daft, Seb,” she told him, laughing. He always was a morbid bugger, she thought. “You're alive.” Pulling him to her, he certainly didn't _feel_ dead. “See, you're warm, you're breathing.” She laughed as she kissed his lips. “You're getting a raging cockstand right now. I think it's safe to say you're alive.”

He didn't tell her, that he has seen men hanged, and he knows that sometimes even a dead man can get hard. For a brief time he was content enough to melt into her arms, forget everything else, think only of her.

“But I don't _feel_ alive,” he said, after.

And he fought still, bare-knuckle fights in the lowest, shabbiest places when his blood was up, gaining a reputation, a name for himself, but not one his father would recognise nor that he would ever be proud of (as if Sebastian had not brought enough shame upon the old man, but he can always try harder to bring down a little more dishonour).

And then one day _he_ came. The Professor dressed in impeccable black, boots polished, hands gloved in finest leather, auburn hair neatly slicked down, so pristine and contained and refined. Attired like an undertaker, with his carriage painted dark and drawn by two black horses. And he made Moran, maybe the devil alone only knows why, an offer Moran could not – and, of course, would not - refuse.

Kill for me, he says, and Moran does, finger steady on the trigger, controlling his breath, his pulse even in the moment of the perfect kill so as not to miss his shot.

Steal for me.

_Yes sir._

Kneel for me.

_Yes sir._

Looking down at the Colonel, his eyebrow arched, his mouth quirked into the barest smile, Moriarty runs a gloved thumb across Moran's lower lip, and Moran's breath catches in his chest.

“My dear Moran,” Moriarty says softly, and, soon after, his chest against Moran's back, his voice even softer still against Moran's ear, “ _Sebastian_. _”_

And he writes books that Moran cannot understand, draws on a blackboard figures that Moran cannot decipher, the chalk white as bone smudging on his fingers, and he talks to his students of numbers, of equations and eclipses, of the paths of asteroids, of comets and of chaos while from the shadows Moran watches, and listens. And he scribbles in codes on paper that will be burned to ashes soon after, and Moran does not understand most of those either but he plays the errand boy, the paper folded and tucked into his waistcoat close to his heart, and he plays too at being a gentleman's gentleman, polishing the Professor's shoes, brushing the chalk dust from the Professor's jacket, and in truth he is all that – his assassin, messenger, valet – but also far more besides.

Moran was honourable once, so they say. Oh they loved him when he killed for them but what did that mean really, to be an honourable soldier? What did that ever bring him? A mention in despatches, a line or two in a newspaper, a few shiny bits of metal to hang off his dress uniform? To be the lackey of an empire he cares not at all about; a pawn leading other pawns, all of whom they would offer up for the slaughter without hesitating, for your Queen and country they said; for the glorious British Empire. Sacrifice is necessary, they said. Moran scoffed at that even then, regarding them with narrowed eyes and treasonous thoughts on his mind. Standing over a dead young soldier and thinking _fuck your queen and country._ Not his queen, not his country, and no more are they Moriarty's either.

And then once or twice men come to them, to speak of the _Irish question._ Blood will out, they say. Scotland Yard; England is in outrage over the Fenians, and this certainly seems to amuse the Professor, that through often rather crude means the police and the populace can be so disrupted and incensed. He listens to those men in silence but gives nothing away. Not entirely lacking in sympathy, in truth, but that is not his cause and their mission has little in it to hold his interest for long. They are not his brothers and his cause is his own. Irish blood may indeed run in those veins beneath his pale skin, if he has blood at all and not ice-water in them as some rumours say, but he is a man out of place, out of time.

Those men do not come again.

With a mind like his, Moriarty could have been a politician, a brilliant leader or some Machiavellian arch manipulator working behind the scenes perhaps, as the brother of that meddling amateur detective is said to do, but that would have been far too conventional a path for Moriarty to take, and tedious too. Politics does not interest him, even its darkest side.

One hot sultry night when Moran is reminded inexorably of nights in India, Moriarty has diamonds, chips of glittering white fire cupped in his palm as he crouches over Moran. And he pours them onto Moran's bare abdomen, watches them shine in the candlelight, flickering through a rainbow of colours against Moran's skin. Stolen, of course, but Moriarty is far from the first to have procured them through illegal means. How strange it is, to think how readily so many men would kill for these little pieces of rock; how much blood has been spilt in pursuit of these stones long before Moriarty got hold of them.

“How perfectly absurd men are,” he says. Not a man to wish to deck himself or his companion out in jewels, still there is something very charming about the way in which these stolen gems sparkle against Moran's naked body, and the Professor laughs even as he is inclining his head to kiss Moran on the mouth.

And, later, in what should be supposedly the dying days of summer, Moran sits on a rooftop and he watches and he waits, the metal of his rifle hotter than blood, and he is as still as the atmosphere. There seems to be not a breath of air, not a puff of wind anywhere in this stifling city. Sweat trickles down his neck, and he remembers again the oppressive heat in India at times, and he misses the place not at all. All those years he spent there, but never was that his home either. His home is not a country, not a place really at all, except for in that space by the Professor's side.

Waiting, still waiting, and Moran sees a butterfly land on his wrist momentarily, seeking moisture perhaps from the salt-sweat on that little stretch of bare skin. He does not flinch; he watches it rest for a second or two before beating its wings and rising skyward again, and he goes back to waiting serenely for that one perfect moment to make the kill.

If he is forever still living in the penumbra cast by another, carrying out that man's every order, obedient to his whims, enthralled by and in thrall to him, his name inextricably linked to Moriarty's, never to be remembered except as some addendum to the Professor's, that is all right by Moran. If he must forever now play this game of shadows where there is only one punishment for betrayal; where men can be moved and manipulated and knocked down like mere chess pieces, so be it. And one day, if there truly is anything more after death, when Moran follows Moriarty into the light – or perhaps into the dark instead – he will follow him down into hell too. After all that time facing some foreign enemy on some dusty distant battleground and those occasions where he has stood eye to eye with a beast made of fur and fire and fury and razor teeth, for the first time Sebastian Moran truly knows what it is to face Death, yet to feel truly alive.


End file.
